The Secret Fears of a Prepper

by | Aug 15, 2011 | Civil Unrest, Communications, Electro Magnetic Pulse, Preparedness, suburban survival, Urban Survival | 11 comments

Back from anoth­er daunt­ing busi­ness trip to the west coast last week, I did some­thing I don’t nor­mal­ly do these days.  I did­n’t bring with me any of my trav­el preps or trav­el EDC. What?  You ask.  After both you and Prep­per­Jim have been writ­ing about the impor­tance of bring­ing some preps on your busi­ness trav­el?  Yes.  In some ways this was an exper­i­ment, and in anoth­er cat­e­go­ry, I was try­ing to light­en my load since it was a large roller suit­case.

Pri­mar­i­ly, it was an exper­i­ment.  It was an exper­i­ment in fear.  It was­n’t too many years ago that I would trav­el with­out any EDC, and I had no preps at all.  It was­n’t too many years ago I was­n’t pay­ing atten­tion to the econ­o­my, pol­i­tics, etc.  I want­ed to test some of my own fear on this busi­ness trip.  How did it work out?  Well, I’m back, unscathed, with no major dis­as­ter, with the excep­tion of the stock mar­ket decline last week, giv­ing me the fear of eco­nom­ic decline.  In truth, all week long, in the back of my mind I had the tin­gling feel­ing that I should have brought with my my trav­el EDC.  It again has changed and expand­ed upon, which I will out­line in anoth­er post, how­ev­er, it is my safe­ty net when trav­el­ing, and as it seems, gives me men­tal solace while trav­el­ing.

So, what does that have to do with my secret fears.  Well, in many ways, my lit­tle exper­i­ment spawned some thought around what some of my fears as a prep­per (or human being) in gen­er­al are.  They are a lit­tle extreme, but in the back of my mind not unlike­ly.

So here are a list of my fears while trav­el­ing:

1.  EMP.  Yes, an EMP.  But not nec­es­sar­i­ly “just” an EMP.  It seems I am death­ly afraid of an EMP that is not iso­lat­ed to a small area, but an EMP that may be det­o­nat­ed above the Unit­ed States while I am in the air, in a plane, going my work des­ti­na­tion.  It is a cer­tain death from 35,000 feet in the air.  No amount of preps are going to save you (me) in the event of an EMP while I am in the air.

I would much rather be on the ground in famil­iar or unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry dur­ing an EMP than in the air.  As far fetched as some peo­ple think it is, it is close to the top of my fear list.

2.  Earth­quake.  A real fear for me, since I spend some time in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia pret­ty con­sis­tent­ly.  I have been in a cou­ple of “light” earth­quakes out there that have made the TV and Radio.  In both cas­es they hap­pened at night/very ear­ly morn­ing.  I slept through both.  Both were on the news the next day, and both were in the 4.0 range.  How­ev­er, I am fear­ful of a much larg­er earth­quake while on the west coast where it par­a­lyzes ground and air trans­porta­tion to get­ting home and not hav­ing ade­quate preps with me while on the road, and hav­ing to depend on gov­ern­ment in an urban and sub­ur­ban envi­ron­ment.

3.  Eco­nom­ic Col­lapse.  Yes, eco­nom­ic col­lapse, while trav­el­ing.  I always try to keep an ade­quate amount of cash on my per­son while trav­el­ing.  How­ev­er, if the banks close, if the ATMs are not work­ing, if the cred­it cards are not work­ing, it may be near to impos­si­ble to get home in the short term.  While it did­n’t hap­pen this past week, I watched the finan­cial news eager­ly won­der­ing what might hap­pen while on the road, won­der­ing if I should car­ry extra cash in an enve­lope which might be enough to buy an emer­gency plane or bus tick­et at the air­port if nec­es­sary to get me home.  Maybe bring with me a sev­er­al of those sil­ver coins that I have recent­ly acquired to sell in a pinch.  Note, how­ev­er, there will be added weight.  Sigh…

4.  Riot.  Dete­ri­o­ra­tion of rule of law is a huge con­sid­er­a­tion.  When I trav­el it is gen­er­al­ly to a city.  After look­ing at what is hap­pen­ing in Lon­don with the riots over the past cou­ple of weeks, there is uncer­tain spec­u­la­tion that this is com­ing to a city near you soon if our coun­try’s job and finan­cial sit­u­a­tion does not improve…  I am not lim­it­ing riots to cities how­ev­er, but gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, this is where they hap­pen, and get report­ed on first.  Not sure I want to wake up to a riot out­side my hotel while trav­el­ing.

5.  Being Strand­ed.  A few weeks ago, when I was on the west coast, I drove to Las Vegas for the week­end.  Not to gam­ble mind you, but to vis­it two long time friends that coin­ci­den­tal­ly live in the Las Vegas area.  Dur­ing my dri­ve through the desert to vis­it my two old friends, you pass many exits that seem­ing­ly go to nowhere… You pass the exit to Death Val­ley, etc.  I look down at the ther­mome­ter on the car and see 105 degrees, etc.  What if some­thing were to hap­pen, back to my EMP argu­ment, if the car stops run­ning, many or all of them stop run­ning and you are stuck in the desert.  I usu­al­ly bring with me sev­er­al large bot­tles of water in the trunk when I dri­ve from LA to Las Vegas (I do this about once a year), but being from the north­east, my only sur­vival train­ing for the desert is watch­ing Dual Sur­vivor with Cody Lundin, co-host­ing.  This is only one exam­ple of being strand­ed, how­ev­er.

6.  No Com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  Based on some of the above, com­mu­ni­ca­tion may be cut off.  Not being able to know if my fam­i­ly and friends are okay, or let them know if I am okay is a real fear.

7.  Injury.  Injury while trav­el­ing dur­ing a man made or nat­ur­al dis­as­ter and hav­ing to depend on med­ical care ser­vices that are already strained with many peo­ple wait­ing for med­ical ser­vices, is not my idea of fun.  And again, while I trav­el to cities, most­ly, this is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty…

Those are my main fears while trav­el­ing… Are they found­ed?  I think so.  I think they are all real­is­tic, per­son­al­ly.  I thought about them a lot while trav­el­ing in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia last week.  I prob­a­bly will not be trav­el­ing with­out my trav­el EDC again any­time soon.  While it may not be per­fect, it is cer­tain­ly a lit­tle piece of mind, whether or not I may ever need it.

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11 Comments

  1. Prepperjim
    Prepperjim on August 15, 2011 at 7:47 am

    Did you at least car­ry a knife? Pep­per spray? A small flash­light? A mul­ti­tool?

    Reply
    • suburban
      suburban on August 15, 2011 at 12:38 pm

      @PrepperJim — Of course… I always car­ry a means to cut, build fire, see, and car­ry water. How­ev­er, I left my “Trav­el EDC Kit” (http://suburbansurvivalblog.com/my-business-travel-preparedness-kit), at home. In fact it is great­ly expand­ed, and must still be checked in my lug­gage while in tran­sit. I will post a fol­lowup to this post from last year in a few days with the updat­ed gear…

      Reply
  2. millenniumfly
    millenniumfly on August 15, 2011 at 9:34 am

    Hate to break it to you, but depend­ing on where you’re trav­el­ling you might also fret about hur­ri­canes, tor­na­does, tsunamis, ter­ror­ist attacks, win­ter storms and bliz­zards, heat waves, nuclear cat­a­stro­phes, vol­canic erup­tions, comet impacts, nat­ur­al dis­eases and pan­demics, wild­fires, floods, haz­ardous mate­r­i­al spills, coro­nal mass ejec­tions, and pos­si­ble alien inva­sions. Have a nice day. 🙂

    Reply
    • suburban
      suburban on August 15, 2011 at 9:42 am

      I do fret about those things. I was in the Pacif­ic NW recent­ly, I tend to focus on the dis­as­ters in the area that I am vis­it­ing at the time. i.e. if I were to go to FL this week, I would cer­tain­ly wor­ry about Hur­ri­canes, how­ev­er, this week looks like Min­neapo­lis. As for spills, etc. They are always a con­cern. I was in LA last sum­mer for busi­ness, and there was an over­turned tanker with some­thing all over the free­way. Was­n’t sure what it was, but they shut down the free­way and it took for­ev­er to get from point A to B.

      Reply
  3. DaveNV/AZ
    DaveNV/AZ on August 15, 2011 at 9:49 am

    I have been unem­ployed for over 2 yrs. I had my own busi­ness and I had to let it go to help my daugh­ter recov­er from a major acci­dent and sev­er­al surgerys to help her walk again. I had the abil­i­ty to do this as my bet­ter half had a secure job with a retire­ment plan and med­ical that would see us through the hard times. Now I ant even find a job. My fam­i­ly expects me to return to my earn­ing sta­tus asap so they can con­tin­ue to live at their old life style. Where is this going along the arti­cle lines is I car­ry as many EDC items with me where ever I go. I am back to using mass tran­sit and my bike as trans­port. Peo­ple I use as ref­er­ences no longer live or work at the num­bers I give for them. Its get­ting hard­er to main­tain prep items because we are using many of them to just get by. Recent­ly I had major surgery and had to use a cab to get home because my bet­ter half could not take the time off to get me home. Her secure job is very threat­ened. I have cached items that I might have to recov­er just to con­tin­ue to live day to day. My edc items are becom­ing my BOb.

    Reply
    • suburban
      suburban on August 15, 2011 at 12:17 pm

      @Dave, wow. I am sor­ry to hear you are hav­ing trou­ble find­ing a job. Your com­ment, how­ev­er, makes me feel my fears are not so bad. This is proof that every­one lives in their own bub­ble, and until they get to see or hear about some­one else’s bub­ble, they don’t under­stand how good they have it. What kind of work is it that you used to do? Where specif­i­cal­ly do you live? Feel free to email me direct­ly at jack [at] suburbansurvivalblog.com. I know a lot of peo­ple. Maybe I can talk to some peo­ple if it makes sense or they know of some­thing in your area. I am at work at the moment, but can shoot an email to friends I have out west in the NV and AZ areas, and depend­ing on where you live if it makes sense, it might work out or they may know some­one.

      Reply
  4. Stacey
    Stacey on August 18, 2011 at 10:14 am

    I trav­el for a liv­ing too. Your fears are my same fears.
    I car­ry what I can but I am going to start check­ing a bag and car­ry more.
    I am very inter­est­ed in your trav­el edc so look­ing for­ward to your post.

    EMP strike while in the air is my worst night­mare and keeps me up at night some­times.
    I some­times wish I remained obliv­i­ous to that par­tic­u­lar night­mare since theres noth­ing one can do about it.

    Reply
    • suburban
      suburban on August 18, 2011 at 5:42 pm

      @Stacey — we clear­ly sped too much time in the air…

      Reply
  5. Wicker67
    Wicker67 on August 19, 2011 at 12:55 pm

    I don’t envy you, hav­ing to trav­el for work. I used to 50% of the time, but haven’t in near­ly 6 years. Got a new job doing 8–5, M‑F 20 min­utes from my house. It’s great.

    Love your trav­el EDC. One thing that I like to have in all of my bags, is a whis­tle. In line with the post, I have a fear of being able to hear searchers, but them not hear­ing me.

    Thanks for what you do here, and giv­ing us a forum.

    Reply
    • suburban
      suburban on August 19, 2011 at 5:18 pm

      @Wicker67 Inter­est­ing­ly, a whis­tle is one of those items I do not car­ry as much as I should. Might be my ego get­ting in the way, but it is some­thing so sim­ple that should be in more of my car­ry…

      That said, you are wel­come regard­ing the blog. I do what I can, but the oth­er con­tribut­ing writ­ers help out a lot too, and the spon­sors keep the blog run­ning on it’s own, so that is a HUGE help.

      Reply
  6. AmandaK
    AmandaK on September 29, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    My fear about this hap­pen­ing is sim­ply the fact that we are going to be back to where we were in the “dark ages”. Peo­ple need to become more aware of this and also become more pre­pared. See­ing as how this month is almost over and it’s no longer going to be Pre­pared­ness month, I still feel peo­ple need to be more aware. I am con­stant­ly going to infor­ma­tion­al web­sites to find more out about EMP. I go to EMPact Amer­i­c­as Radio Blog every Wednes­day and lis­ten to their show. Wednes­day Octo­ber 5th, a man named Fritz Ermarth is going to be talk­ing about EMP at 12noon. If you go to their site you can read about him and what he’s done and what he’s doing, he is a wide­ly con­sid­ered to be a true hero of the Cold War. To read more and to lis­ten to this show when it airs; here’s the site: http://empactradio.org/pvp/episode69-fritz-ermarth/

    Reply

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